Homeward Bound (70 page)

“That is not exactly what I meant,” Ttomalss said. “How do you feel about losing your mating partner?”

“He may come back to Home one day, or I may visit Tosev 3,” Kassquit said. “With the new ships, such journeys will not be impossible. I am sad he will go. I am sad, yes, but I am not devastated. Losing a mating partner was harder the first time I did it. I had no standard of comparison then, and no prospect of staying in contact with any other Big Uglies. Things are different now.”

“I see.” Ttomalss broke off, for the server brought in Kassquit’s order just then. After the male left, the psychologist resumed: “You are more mature now than you were then.”

“Maybe I am.” Kassquit began to eat fried zisuili and fungi. “This is an excellent breakfast,” she said, plainly trying to deflect his questions.

“I am glad you like it.” Ttomalss wondered what tone to take with her. No usual one was right, and he knew it. He could not speak to her as one friend did to another among the Race. Too much lay between them for that. Except for not physically siring and bearing her, he had been her parent, in the full, ghastly Tosevite sense of the word. And yet, as he’d said himself just now, she was more mature than she had been—too mature to take kindly to his using the sort of authority he’d had when she was a hatchling.

His mouth fell open in a sour laugh. Did Big Uglies ever know these ambiguities? Or did they understand instinctively how such things were supposed to work? He supposed they had to. If they didn’t, wouldn’t their whole society come tumbling down?

“Is something wrong, superior sir?” Kassquit asked. She must have noticed how unhappy his laugh was. He wouldn’t have thought a Big Ugly could. But, as he was the Race’s leading student of matters Tosevite, so Kassquit knew the Race more intimately than any other Big Ugly, even Sam Yeager.

“No, nothing is really
wrong,
” he replied. “I was thinking about how you respond to stress now, as opposed to how you did when you were younger.”

“You said it yourself, superior sir: I am more mature than I used to be,” Kassquit replied. “I am also more used to the idea of belonging to two worlds than I was. Before, I desperately wanted to be part of the Race, and if that meant abandoning my biological heritage, well then, it did, and that was all there was to it. But I have discovered that I cannot abandon my biology—and I have also discovered I do not want to.”

“You will find your counterpart’s autobiography interesting,” Ttomalss said. “So will I. I look forward to the day the translation reaches Home.”

“Truth.” Kassquit used the affirmative gesture. The server brought Ttomalss his food. As he began to eat, she went on, “I would give a great deal to meet Mickey and Donald. I have already told the Tosevites as much. Those two of all people should understand some of what I have experienced—though they at least had each other.”

Ttomalss crunched a plump roasted grub between his teeth. He said, “There are times when I feel guilty because of what I have done to you. You are not a normal Tosevite, and you never can be. But you may not be worse off on account of that. The lot of a normal Tosevite, especially at the time when I, ah, found you, all too often proved unfortunate.”

“Yes, Frank Coffey has pointed out the same thing to me,” Kassquit said. Because her room was electronically monitored, Ttomalss knew that. He also knew better than to show he knew. Kassquit went on, “I still think I would rather have been as I would have been, if you take my meaning.”

“I think so,” Ttomalss said. “Of course, you have not experienced the disease and the hard labor you would have known had I chosen another Tosevite hatchling. You are comparing what you have now against some ideal existence, not against the reality you would have known.”

“Perhaps,” Kassquit said. “I have certainly learned more of bodily infirmity since become gravid than I ever knew before. These are lessons I do not care to expand upon further.” She looked at her almost empty plate. “This morning, things seem willing to stay down.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Ttomalss said. “I gather your gravidity has persuaded you not to travel on the
Commodore Perry
?”

Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. “None of the wild Tosevites seemed to think it was a good idea. No one knows how traveling faster than light affects developing hatchlings, and no one seems to want to find out by experiment. I do not care for this conclusion, but I must say it makes sense.”

“I agree.” Ttomalss bit down on a ripe ippa fruit. Tart juice and pulp flooded into his mouth. “There will be time enough for such things later.”

“I hope so,” Kassquit said. “This is one of the occasions, though, when I notice that your likely span is longer than mine.” She shrugged. “It cannot be helped. If you will excuse me, superior sir . . .” She rose and left the refectory.

As Ttomalss finished breakfast, he wondered what his likely span was. Kassquit meant that an average member of the Race lived longer than an average Big Ugly. She was right about that, of course. But it held true only in times of peace, of stability. If the missiles started flying, if the hydrogen bombs started bursting, no one of any species was likely to live very long.

The Race and the Big Uglies hadn’t blown Tosev 3 sky-high. They’d come close when the Deutsche reached for something they weren’t big enough to grab. They’d come close, but they hadn’t quite done it. Both sides there had got used to the idea that they were living on the edge of a volcano.

Now all the worlds of the Empire were living by the same crater. Most males and females on Home didn’t realize it yet, but it was true. Rabotev 2 and Halless 1 were blissfully unaware of it . . . or were they? Had Tosevite faster-than-light starships appeared out of nowhere in their skies? For that matter, had the Big Uglies bombarded or conquered the other two planets in the Empire? If they had, Home wouldn’t find out about it for years—unless more Tosevite starships brought the news.

That thought reminded Ttomalss just what a predicament the Race found itself in. The Big Uglies could know things sooner than his own species could, and could act more quickly on what they knew. For years, the Race had tried to decide whether Tosevites were enough of a menace to be worth destroying, and had never quite made up its mind. Even if it had, doing anything would have taken years and years.

If the American Big Uglies decided the Race was still enough of a menace to be worth destroying, how long would they take to act on their decision? Not long at all, both because they were generally quicker to act than the Race and because they now had the technology to match their speed of thought.

Involuntarily, Ttomalss’ eye turrets looked up toward the ceiling. Even if he could have looked up through the ceiling, he couldn’t have seen the
Commodore Perry
in orbit around Home, not in daylight. If the starship launched missiles, he would never know about it till too late.

One eye turret swung down to the grubs and fruit he’d been eating. He was glad he’d just about finished his meal before such thoughts occurred to him. They would have robbed him of his appetite.

After he left the refectory, he thought about going out into Sitneff to call Pesskrag and see how her research team was coming. He’d taken several steps toward the door before he stopped and made the negative gesture. What good would that do? She’d said the research would take years. Asking her about it mere days after he’d last spoken to her wouldn’t gain him any new information. He would just be tugging at her tailstump, annoying her for no good reason.

But he wanted reassurance. He laughed, not that it was particularly funny. Back when Kassquit was a hatchling, he’d constantly had to reassure her that everything was all right, that he would go on taking care of her, that she was a good little female. Sometimes it had almost driven him mad. Hatchlings of the Race, being more independent from their earliest days, didn’t need that constant reinforcement. He’d probably been ill-equipped to give it. Whatever psychological problems Kassquit had were in no small measure of his making.

And now he understood Kassquit in a way he hadn’t while he was raising her. In the huge, frightening world of interspecies rivalries and new technologies, what was he but a tiny hatchling calling out for someone, anyone, to help make him feel safe?

He didn’t think Pesskrag could do for him what he’d once done for Kassquit. He didn’t think anyone could—not Atvar, not even the 37th Emperor Risson himself. He suspected they were all looking for reassurance in the same way he was, and for the same reasons. That didn’t make him crave it any less.

Change was here. For millennia, the Race had insulated itself against such misfortunes. Everyone had praised that as wisdom. Countless generations had lived peaceful, secure, happy lives because of it.

Now, though, like it or not, change was hissing at the door. If the Race couldn’t change . . . If the Race couldn’t change, then in a certain ultimate sense those hundred thousand years of peace and stability might not matter at all.

Ttomalss shivered. Few males or females had ever bumped snouts with the extinction of their species. That was what he saw now. Maybe it was nothing but panic over the arrival of the
Commodore Perry.
On the other hand, maybe panic was what the arrival of the
Commodore Perry
demanded. However much he wished it didn’t, the second seemed more likely than the first.

The wild Big Uglies hadn’t panicked when the conquest fleet arrived. They’d fought back more ferociously and more ingeniously than the Race dreamt they could. Now the Race had to respond in turn. Could it? Ttomalss shivered again. He just didn’t know.

There was Home, spinning by as it had ever since the
Admiral Peary
went into orbit around it. The sight had raised goose bumps in Glen Johnson. Here he was, eyeing the scenery as his spacecraft circled a world circling another sun. The
Admiral Peary
was still doing the same thing it had always done—but the starship had gone from history-maker to historical afterthought in the blink of an eye.

When Johnson said that out loud, Walter Stone shook his head. “Not quite yet,” he said. “We still have another few weeks of serious duties to perform. Till the
Commodore Perry
goes to Earth and then comes back here, we’re the ones on the spot. Up to us to keep the Lizards from doing something everybody would regret.”

He was right. He usually was. And yet, his being right suddenly seemed to matter very little. “Yes, sir,” Johnson said. “Sorry about that. We’re not a historical afterthought right this minute. But we will be any day now.”

Stone gave him a fishy stare. “You never have had the right attitude, have you?”

Johnson shrugged, there in the control room. “The right attitude? I don’t know anything about that. All I know is, we’re about the most obsolete set of spacemen God ever made. We spent all those years weightless, and now we can’t be anything else. And we made a fine, successful crew for a cold-sleep starship—the only problem being that they won’t make any more of those. Buggy whips, slide rules—and us. What do the Russians call it? The ash-heap of history, that’s what it is. And that’s where we’re at.”

Brigadier General Stone’s gaze got fishier yet. “If we are, Johnson, you’re still a pain in the ash.”

“Aiii!”
Johnson looked back reproachfully. “And here I thought you were you, and not Mickey Flynn.”

“Is someone taking my name in vain?” Flynn asked from the corridor that led into the interior of the
Admiral Peary.
He came out into the control room a moment later. “How did I get into trouble without even being here?”

“Native talent?” Johnson suggested.

Flynn shook his head. His jowls wobbled. “Can’t be that.”

“Why not?” Stone asked. “It makes sense to me.”

“As if that proved anything,” Flynn said with dignity. He pointed to the planet they were circling. “How can I be native talent in this solar system?”

“He’s got a point,” Johnson said.

Stone shrugged this time. “Well, what if he does?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed off, slid gracefully past Flynn, and vanished down that corridor.

“Was it something I said?” Flynn wondered.

“Nope. He just doesn’t care to be last year’s model, but he can’t do anything about it,” Johnson answered.

“Anybody who can remember when rockets to the Moon were the province of pulp magazines is not going to be right up to date,” Flynn observed. “For that matter, neither is anybody who can remember pulp magazines.”

“That’s true,” Johnson said. “I was never on the Moon. Were you? And here we are in orbit around Home. It’s pretty peculiar, when you think about it.”

“The Moon’s not worth going to. This place is,” Flynn said.

He wasn’t wrong about that, either. The Lizards had been amused when humans flew to the Moon. Since the Race was used to flying between the stars, that first human journey to another world must have seemed like the smallest of baby steps. And when people went to Mars, the Lizards were just plain perplexed. Why bother? The place obviously wasn’t worth anything.

“Heck,” Johnson said, “they didn’t even get all that hot and bothered when we went out to the asteroid belt in the
Lewis and Clark.
”

“At least they were curious then,” Flynn said. “We had a constant-boost ship. That made them sit up and take notice. And they wondered what the dickens we were up to. Those spy machines of theirs . . .”

Johnson laughed. “Oh, yeah. I remember spoofing one of them when I was in a scooter. I signaled to it just the same way as I had to some of the bases we’d set up on the rocks close by the ship.”

“That should have given some Lizard monitoring the signals the spy machine was picking up a case of the hives,” Flynn said.

“Well, I hope so. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know for sure, though,” Johnson said. “What I do know for sure is, it gave our dearly beloved commandant a case of the hives. He called me into his lair, uh, office to grill me on the weird signal I’d sent. Somehow, he never appreciated my sense of humor.”

“He probably thought it lacked that quality of mirth known as being funny,” Flynn said.